BNP senior leader Gayeshwar Chandra Roy on Sunday gave an explanation about having lunch at the office of the Detective Branch (DB) of Police during his detention Saturday.

Talking to reporters at his Nayapaltan office, he said the video and pictures of his lunch at the DB office have been circulated with the intention to mislead people. Gayeshwar said spreading videos and photos of the incident on social media is a low-taste joke and a very shameful and hateful act.

The BNP standing committee member also said he did not have the food brought by the DB office from Sonargaon Hotel; instead he had the food sent from the home of DB chief Harun-or-Rashid.

“Those who did it (spread the video and photos on social media) demonstrated their low taste. It is a funny drama and I don’t know who wrote the script,” the BNP leader said.

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A video containing Gayeshwar having lunch at the DB office with its chief Harun-Or-Rashid went viral on Saturday. The BNP leader was detained from Dholaikhal during a clash between police and BNP activists. Later, he was brought to the DB office.

Narrating the incident, Gayeshwar said DB officials requested him to eat as his blood pressure was down.

“They said ‘Sir you did not eat anything all day. We heard that you did not even drink water. You’re going to be injected with saline. Will you take the saline without having anything? Eat a bit of whatever we have. We can’t keep you without food as we have the responsibility even if we don’t arrest you,’” the veteran leader relayed what was said to him.

“Entering the dining room I saw the huge arrangement of food…I told them I don’t take the food of Sonargaon and any other hotel. I am more than 90 percent vegetarian and I don’t eat more than one or two items. I saw they were taking photos and I told them taking photos while having food is not an act of a gentleman,” he continued.

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Later, he said the DB chief asked his staff to bring the food that came from his (Harun’s) home.

“He (Harun) gave me two spoons of plain rice from the tiffin career. I told him to give me only his vegetables. Then, he said ‘Sir take a piece of rui fish that came very fresh from Kishoreganj.’”

The BNP leader said he went to the DB office many times earlier and he was entertained with food from the hotels in the nearby area. “But who gave them the fund to buy food this time from Sonargaon? Do they have the rule to do it? Do they behave like this with others whom they take into custody? So, it can be understood they staged the drama to show people. It’s a low-taste joke. People of Bangladesh are not so foolish that they will be misguided with the intentional photos and videos.”

Gayeshwar said the state does not have so much money to buy Gayeshwar Roy's head. "The state has the power to kill me with one shot and it has the power to make me disappear like Ilias Ali, Chowdhury Alam…but the government has no capacity to purchase a person like Gayeshwar Chandra Roy.”

Amid clashes between the police and the BNP activists during the party’s sit-in programme in the capital’s Dholaikhal, law enforcers beat Gayeshwar on Saturday, leaving him injured.

Later, he was detained with his head bleeding from a cut and taken first to Wari Police Station and then to Rajarbagh Police Hospital.

After primary treatment there, he was taken to the DB office where he had lunch, before he was dropped off in front of his office.

Describing the attack on him, Gayeshwar said the police started lobbing teargas shells at BNP leaders and activists as they gathered at Dholaikhal to observe their party’s sit-in programme at the entrances of the capital, triggering the clash.

“You have seen through the media how our activists and I were beaten with sticks... I fell to the ground as they hit me with sticks, and even then they beat me. It seemed they were beating a snake," he said.

Earlier, BNP Secretary General Mirza Fakhrul Islam Alamgir visited Gayeshwar at his office in Nayapaltan and inquired about his physical condition.

Many other BNP leaders and workers visited him there throughout the day.